


Late Night Thoughts

by afteriwake



Series: Stuff Of Improbable Legends [48]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Eureka, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Male-Female Friendship, One-Sided Attraction, One-Sided Zane Donovan/Skye | Daisy Johnson, POV Zane Donovan, Past Relationship(s), Past Zane Donovan/Jo Lupo, Relationship Thoughts, Sleeping On Lap, Wishful Thinking, Zane Thinking, Zane Wants More
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 15:47:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6476341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night when Daisy is over Zane has some late night thoughts, thoughts he's been having more often than not. Thoughts he'd rather not have because no matter how many times he has them, they're thoughts that probably won't bring about anything but the end of...whatever it is him and Daisy have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Late Night Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sideofrawr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sideofrawr/gifts).



> So this is not the Zane/Daisy prompt that I have been telling **sideofrawr** that I would right, but it's something we were talking about recently and when she sent me two prompts for them from [this list of nonsexual acts of intimacy](http://penaltywaltz.tumblr.com/post/137274126169/nonsexual-acts-of-intimacy-select-from-the) and one of them was " _one falling asleep with their head in the other's lap_ " I just _had_ to write this. It's kind of sad so I'm sorry for that (kinda, but not really).

> _We have both lived with lips_  
>  _more scar tissue than skin. Our love came_  
>  _unannounced in the middle of the night._  
>  \- from _Mouthful of Forevers_ by Clementine von Radics

Daisy was special.

It wasn’t just the fact she had powers. He knew that was a thing; her show made it a point to make it a thing, as they had seen when they’d watch it, when she’d give in to the urge to see just what kind of mess her life was, what new kind of problems were thrown in her path. He actually felt pretty damn lucky that the people who were in charge of coming up with crap for him to have gone through every week decided the worst thing for him to go through was for him to end up in an alternate universe. He’d still ended up with the woman he’d grown to love and a well-respected department head at GD and he’d grown the hell up and made something of himself.

If he wanted to be truthful, one day he was going to find the guys in charge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically the ones in charge of her show and character development and storylines, and give them a stern talking to. Maybe figure out if there was some way he could come up with some tech to convince them to give her the happiness she deserved. There had been stuff at GD that involved mental manipulation. He was sure he could whip something together, even with his inventory having been decimated because of that damn bad luck clover.

Even if he spent the rest of his life in jail for kidnapping and torture if they remembered it, it’d be worth it if it ended up giving Daisy something better if she ever got sent back home.

He looked down at his lap, small grin on his face. She might come off as a tough girl on screen but he knew better. She was a cuddler. She loved being close to him, being practically on his lap when they were watching TV together. Her head was usually on his shoulder, or her legs were draped across his lap, or, like tonight, she was stretched out sleeping with her head in his lap. He reached down and brushed her hair away from her face. She’d had a long and frustrating day with stuff she didn’t want to talk about and had come over for vodka shots and MST3K and she’d drank a lot and curled up next to him and just slept. His afternoon had been spent arranging things to get Em to move in, and he'd ended up having a pretty enlightening and somewhat depressing conversation with Cami about him and Daisy.

He knew Daisy felt safe with him. He never asked about Ward, either in her home universe or in Lawrence. He never asked about Lincoln, either. She didn’t want to talk about it and he didn’t press, just like she never asked him about Jo-Jo. She’d been hurt, she’d been through having her heart battered. She’d made decisions she regretted. And he made decisions he’d regretted, though not nearly as much. The people who controlled his life had been nicer to him. But he’d tried to make decisions regarding his happiness when he was free of them, back in Lawrence, that had failed when he’d been taken back to Eureka, and coming back to finding he had lost his chance at maybe being happy, and then seeing it being squashed a second time here in New Orleans...that had stung.

But maybe here, maybe with the woman with him right now, he had a second chance.

Maybe.

He’d realized, slowly, that he’d fallen in love with her. It had hit him in the middle of the night, one evening a few days after people started dreaming about what happened to them back home. For the most part he’d figured he’d have a good life with Jo in Eureka back home, if he was going to have dreams about it. And he waited and waited for the dreams to start. He knew some people had hoped for them to come, and some hadn’t. And it hit him one night, like a bolt out of the blue, that as much as he loved Jo-Jo, he’d let it go. It had been so long for him since he’d been in Eureka, so long since he’d touched her or held her or kissed her. But he hadn’t stopped thinking about Daisy. He hadn’t even kissed her, not really, and yet he found himself hoping that if he was lucky, he’d see what a future in New Orleans held, not what a future in Eureka held.

He kept his thoughts on the subject to himself, though. To Daisy, it was all in good fun, them being a couple. It was a gigantic prank to pull, and for the moment he was playing along because it meant he could stay close. He wanted to keep her close, have more moments like this. But he had the feeling that soon it was going to get too painful to keep pretending. He wasn’t sure if she’d ever consider him for real, ever consider _really_ having a relationship with him.

For now, though, he thought as he stroked back her hair for a moment before gently easing her head off his lap and getting off the couch, he’d take what he could get. He would try to keep it going as long as he could until it just got to the point where he couldn’t deal with it anymore. He’d try and be better than before and not run. Maybe he’d even man up and tell her the truth, tell her how he actually felt, lay it all out on the line and see if there was a chance she felt the same or see if he scared her off for good. But as he gently picked her up off the couch, shifting his hold on her to get comfortable before he carried her to the room she’d claimed as her own, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it. Because while he may have changed over the years, while he may have grown and matured and made strides to be better, when it came to matters of the heart he was still a coward in some ways.

And in the end, maybe that would be his undoing.


End file.
